Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive but you’ll never know

I’ll probably never actually know my meaning.

But I’m sure that my meaning is in the seeds I’m throwing.

I’m throwing them with every word I write in the vain hope that someone will read them.

I’m throwing them whenever someone come to me wanting advice or a chance to speak in confidence.

I am not full of myself enough to believe that I’m changing the world.

It is really nothing more than a petty vendetta. Someone who believes got into an internet war with a particularly ruthless (and well-informed and somewhat blunt) skeptic. The believer contacted another believer, and so they hatched a diabolical scheme to fix her wagon.

And the last thing these people want is some kind of Reformation in which things like “blood purity for blood purity’s sake” and the taboos against a certain striped coat pattern might be openly questioned using empirical methods.

Like all defenders of the faith, these high priestesses must defend the dogma.

But this is just pathetic.

All Jess is guilty of is asking these to questions:

“Why do we believe this? What is the evidence?”

And when they tried to answer using the dogma, the evidence was wanting in so many ways.

That’s what happens.

That’s the game that has been played ever since the registries were closed and the Great Schisms between fanciers led to the creation of a many Balkanized gene pools from what were once dynamic bloodlines that contained a wealth of genetic diversity.

But the values inherent in that game are being lost. Their currency doesn’t set will with a greater number of people every year. The institutions, the clergy, and the dogma no longer sound legitimate.

And at that level, change is coming.

It comes bit by bit.

Then there’s a great leap.

Then a setback.

And back to bit by bit.

But sooner or later, things will change.

These little games are but an amusing sign that these people are desperate.

Desperate for times in which what they said was accepted as the absolute truth.

For this is the system whose values they accepted and mature in. It is within that paradigm that their views of what is successful and what is correct are fundamentally shaped.

But what happens when that paradigm is fundamentally shaken?

The answer: Resort to cheap insults.

Maybe it will go away.

But it doesn’t change that the dogmas inherent in the various dog cultures are being openly questioned on so many levels.

New ideas are seeping into the belief systems. The internet allows all of us access to different perspectives on these issues.

We don’t have to believe because that’s the only thing out there.

We can question. We can innovate.

And that bugs the hell out of these people.

Here’s to more general Lollardy in the dog world!

John Wycliffe speaking to his fellow Lollards. Good thing they weren't in Salukis or their e-mail addresses would be published!